INNER WORKINGS

My first Sunday puzzle in the NY Times! The inspiration for this puzzle came from my daughter's first day in second grade. She came home that day with a variety of word puzzles, including words within words, e.g. THODEEPUGHT. Her schoolwork got me thinking about short phrases containing "in" that could work in a puzzle, rather than just a word within a word, like her example. From that moment of inspiration, the creation of this puzzle became a tutorial in how to create a consistent, tight-knit set of theme entries. Indeed, the published version is the fourth iteration of the puzzle. (My daughter is now in third grade, so you can get a sense of the gestation period for this puzzle!)

In the first version, I had many interesting theme entries, but they were inconsistent in whether or not an article was dropped — e.g. HIGHFRIENDSPLACES, CHINABULLSHOP and NEWRINGYEAR — all nice entries, but the second drops an "a", the third a "the", whereas the first does not drop an article at all. In hindsight, this should have been an obvious consideration in the selection of my theme entries. I went back to my list of over 50 possible theme entries and sorted for grammatical consistency. The selection process became much more difficult because no group of possible theme entries had more than 10-12 members. As if that wasn't enough, I added the additional constraint to the selection process of having crossing theme entries — both versions 2 and 3 had 8 entries, with 2 in the down orientation.

Both the second and third versions of the puzzle were grammatically consistent, but some of the entries were weak. Hence, the tutorial concluded with the valuable lesson of not compromising the selection of theme entries for the sake of having them cross. Everything finally came together in the fourth and final version, which is the result you see today. As a new constructor, it was a real education. (I got started in crossword creation about 4 years ago after seeing Will Shortz give a talk in Indianapolis — I caught the cruciverbalist bug).

My other passion, time permitting (and it is tough with an 8 year old) is large format photography. It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that spatial relationships — be they black squares on a crossword grid or subject elements on the ground glass of a large format camera (viewed upside and in reverse) — are something of great interest to me. The rest, as they say, is "history", although in my case, a very thin one! I definitely want to extend a tremendous thanks to Will for his continued encouragement and assistance in finalizing the theme set for this puzzle.

This puzzle has an interesting history. Pawel and I went back and forth on the theme many times, as he progressively refined the idea and got better examples. In the end I thought it turned out great — very tight, with all familiar, lively phrases. He constructed the grid, I edited it, the puzzle-testers did their thing, etc. And after the puzzle went to the Times and was all set to be published ... I learned from a solver who got an advance copy that I ran a puzzle with the same theme, using two-and-a-half of the same theme entries, three years ago. :-(

Well, at least I'm consistent in what I like!

It's still a fine puzzle, with an expanded theme (Sunday-size rather than daily), and a solid construction besides. Still worth doing, I think, despite the accidental theme duplication. I hope you agree.

Nice wordplay theme today, literal interpretations of "X in a Y" phrases, CANARY IN A COAL MINE transmogrifying into COAL CANARY MINE. This is a theme type that hasn't been done too many times before, my LAT debut and Parker's weekday puzzle coming to mind. I like that Pawel tried to do something different with it, expanding to a Sunday-size puzzle. He sent me a shorter version of his notes, but I asked if I could run the longer version — I liked reading about his entire process.

I like the balance Pawel struck today. There's not huge amount of sparkling fill — FAT CHANCE, MT EVEREST, PARODIST, RAW DEAL, CADDIES — but it was enough to add zest to my solving experience. And I appreciate how I didn't run into too much glue. I hitched when I got to SONDE, an odd little bit, but that fell pretty quickly. Some might have trouble with CALAIS, but that town does have historical importance so I think it's fine. Keeping things to a smattering of CPO, EIN, NNE, OON, SFC, OESTE, etc. isn't too shabby.

Since three of the theme entries are essentially identical to Parker's 2011 puzzle, I would have liked more time between the two. How much is enough? For a crossword-OCD person like myself, Parker's puzzle came to mind immediately, so perhaps something more like five years? Of course, most people will have long forgotten even things like their ... their... (well, I forget) over the course of three years.

Anyway, a fun puzzle with some nice long themers.